So what’s OpenCon all about, then?

A few people have asked about the format of OpenCon, so I’m going to expand a bit on the idea!

OpenCon will be a weekend of workshops, discussions, socialising and community-building among non-monogamous people in the beautiful Dorset countryside. It’ll run from the evening of Friday 14th October until the afternoon of Sunday 16th October, and it costs £90 for a bed, full board and unlimited cups of tea over the weekend.

OpenCon is envisioned and organised using the unconference model: the idea is that attendees bring their ideas and run workshops themselves on topics they’d like to see discussed. Essentially, we’re trying to provide a space in which conversations can happen – we as organisers don’t necessarily know what poly people should be discussing, but you do, so we’ve put the programme into your hands.

A few workshops have been arranged in advance to kick off the weekend, including discussions on being bi and poly, poly activism, and feminism. When attendees arrive, they’ll see a big schedule with a small number of pre-arranged workshops, a large number of empty timeslots in our five workshop spaces, and a stack of post-its and pens for adding their own sessions to the mix. We haven’t published the schedule in advance because we don’t want the small number of pre-arranged workshops to be the focus!

It’s not just workshops, either – there’s loads to do to help make OpenCon a success, including publicity, arranging rideshares, evening entertainment, meeting and greeting, being a friendly face on desk and keeping people in touch after the event. There’s now this awesome google doc, where anyone can sign up for (or suggest) anything!

After discussion, we’ve actively chosen to not advertise OpenCon very much because this is intended as a community event for people already practising non-monogamy, rather than an outreach or an introductory event. We’re happy to let news spread slowly via word of mouth, because this is more likely to lead to a group of really awesome people making the event happen!

Last year’s event included pre-arranged workshops on poly activism (which created Polytical.org), relationship anarchy, and poly and spirituality, and we also saw people arrange workshops on queer poly, sexuality, sci-fi and many more. It was a brilliant weekend! This year, we’ve more workshop space, more people coming and a shiny new chillout and craft area, and I think it’s going to be even better!